Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,55
porno.”
Chelsea replaced the magazine. “Was that Kristi Lane?”
“Maybe. It sure looked like her.”
“But that magazine has a 1988 copyright. Kristi Lane would have looked a lot older—she’d be in her fifties.”
“You can’t tell about that sort of smut. Maybe it was bootleg stuff shot years before. You don’t worry about copyrights here.”
“The publisher is given as Nightseed X-Press, but their post office box now belongs to some New Age outfit. They weren’t helpful.”
“The old fly-by-night. Been gone for years.”
“Who was shooting stuff like this back then? This looks fresh from the racks on 42nd Street.”
“So it’s a Kristi Lane lookalike. Hey, I saw Elvis singing at a bar just yesterday. Only, he was Jewish.”
Steinman reached again for his empty glass, gave it a befuddled scowl. “Look. It’s all Mob stuff now. The porno racket. Don’t ask. Forget it. But—you really interested in the old stuff, the pin-up stuff? I got all my work filed away at my studio. No porno. Want to come up and see it?”
“Come up and see your etchings?”
“Hey, on the level. I could be your grandfather.”
“Do you have any shots of Kristi Lane?”
“Hundreds of them. Say, have you ever posed professionally? Not pin-ups, I mean—but you have a wonderful face.”
Chelsea smiled briskly and closed her case. “Tell you what, Morrie. Here’s my business card. See what you’ve got on Kristi Lane, and then phone me at work. Could be I’ll come by and take off my glasses for you.”
She gathered up her things and the bar tab, and because he looked so much like a gone-to-seed gnome, she kissed him on top of his balding head.
“Hey, Miss Gayle!” he called after her. “I’ll ask around. Look, doll, I’ll be in touch!”
Chelsea played back the messages on her answering machine, found nothing of interest, and decided on a long, hot bath. Afterward, she slipped into a loose T-shirt and cotton boxer shorts, and she microwaved the first Lean Cuisine dinner she found in her freezer. A dish of ice cream seemed called for, and she curled up with her cat to consider her day.
The old geek at the used books and magazines dump off Times Square had given her Morrie Steinman’s name after she had purchased an armload of Kristi Lane material from him. Apart from adding to her collection, she had really gained nothing from it at all—although it was a thrill to talk with someone who had actually photographed Kristi Lane back at the start of her career.
Chelsea gave her cat the last of the ice cream and hauled the heavy coffee-table book on Kristi Lane onto her lap. It had recently been published by Academy Editions, and she had lugged it back to New York from the shop in Holland Street, Kensington, certain that there was not likely to be a U.S. edition. Its title was Kristi Lane: The Girl of Men’s Dreams, but Chelsea had already been dreaming of her for years.
She turned through the pages, studying photo after photo of Kristi Lane. Kristi Lane in stripper’s costumes, Kristi Lane in high heels and seamed tights and pointed bras and lacy panties and bulky girdles and all the clumsy undergarments of the fifties. Kristi Lane decked out in full fetish gear—boots and corsets and leather gloves and latex dresses and braided whips. Kristi Lane tied to chairs, lashed to tables, spread-eagled over wooden frames, chained and gagged, encased in leather hoods and body sheaths. Kristi Lane tying other women into stringent bondage positions, gagging them with tape and scarves and improbable devices, spanking them with hairbrushes and leather straps.
Chelsea already had many of the photos in her own collection. However familiar, she kept paging through the book. Perhaps this time she might find a clue.
Of course, there was nothing new to be learned: Kristi Lane. Real name unknown. Birthplace and date of birth unknown. Said to be from Ohio. Said to be a teenager when she began her modeling career in New York. Much in demand as pin-up and bondage model during the 1950s. Dropped out of sight about 1962. End of text. Nothing left to do but look at the pictures.
Chelsea shoved the book aside and plopped her cat onto her vacated warmth on the couch. It was bedtime for the Chelsea girl.
Her dream was not unexpected. Nor surprising.
She was wearing one of those funny conical bras that made her breasts stick out like Dagmars on a fish-tail Cadillac—that was her first impression. After that came the discomfort of the boned white